Bill Paxton is up for a “Twister” sequel. Anyone else?
Posted by Will Harris (01/07/2010 @ 11:46 pm)
In an interview with Bullz-Eye in conjunction with the season premiere of HBO’s “Big Love” (Sunday, Dec. 10th), Bill Paxton revealed that one of the items on his to-do list is a sequel to his 1996 blockbuster, “Twister.”
“I’ve had a meeting at the studio with Kathleen Kennedy about it,” Paxton said, whose inspiration for a sequel came as a result of a trip that he took to the Ozark Mountains last spring.
“I flew into St. Louis with my buddy Scott Thomson, who played Preacher in ‘Twister,’ and we rented a car and drove down to southeastern Missouri, into the Ozarks,” said Paxton. “We spent the night, and the next morning we got up and we started tracking the trail of the most famous tornado that ever hit the country, which was the Tri-State Tornado of 1925. It still holds all of the records. It was called the Tri-State because it was a mile wide when it came down from the sky on the afternoon of March 16, 1925, and it was a rural area, but, boy, before it was through, it crossed the Mississippi, it cut across southern Illinois, where it hit a lot of towns. The biggest one was Murphysboro, which was…it literally looked like Hiroshima after it hit. And then it went across the Wabash, into Indiana, staying on the ground three and a half hours and cutting a damage path 219 miles long, killing about 700 people. There’s actually footage that I found in Murphysboro at their historical society. They had footage from a biplane that the government sent down, just to do aerial footage of all of the destruction and the damage. So we just did that to kind of get some ideas, and from that I kind of extrapolated an idea for a sequel. And I kind of put that together into a format, and now we’re kind of waiting to see if that’s going to move forward.That would need Steven Spielberg’s blessing, ultimately, and they probably won’t take it to him ‘til there’s real studio interest, but I think the 3D applications of that could obviously be pretty amazing.
“The only reason I’d like to revisit that ground is because I realize we’re living in a time where big movies cost so much to make that the town is looking for built-in audiences,” admitted Paxton. “Of course, I’m so glad to see that the success of ‘Avatar’ is disproving that theory, but…I always thought the first ‘Twister’ was an exciting ride, but I thought a sequel could explore it in a more enthralling way, getting into more of the history and the lore, more of a darker version of the first one.”
Although it may sound more serious than the original “Twister,” Paxton doesn’t think that fans of the first film would have any problem accepting the sequel. “I think you’d still want to have a lot of the dark humor and all of that, with the flying cows and everything,” he said, with a laugh. “I think you could kind of intrigue people more by getting into a little more of the lore and really understanding. I just think there’s a lot more to explore there. When I researched the first film when I was getting ready to do it, I just found so much stuff. Ultimately, I was happy with ‘Twister,’ but I also had thought that it could’ve gotten a little deeper into it.”
What you do you think? I can’t say I’ve been chomping at the bit for “Twister 2,” but Paxton has proven in the past that he can make just about anything worth watching, and his point about how such a film would be perfect for 3D is certainly food for thought.
(P.S. Stay tuned for the full interview with Mr. Paxton, running on Bullz-Eye.com next Friday!)

I'd go see it....just think of how much special effects have changed in the past 14 years. For instance, the spaghetti-tornado in "Cloudy with a chance of meatballs" was in my opinion, great. That's just a cartoon!
I would like to see some reference in the "potential" new movie to the popularity of storm chasing nowadays i.e. how all the amateurs clog the highways "chasing", news crews,etc.
Helen must be in it as well...lol

Problem is...all of the "made for tv" movies following Twister were so cheesy (Atomic Twister, for example)...people lost interest.

I agree. It's been redone and overdone. IT was great at the time of the original because it was a new story concept. But there's been a handful of mediocre TV twister/chaser movies, as well as tons of Discovery Channel style stuff on chasers, that it would be hard to make another movie about it interesting.

I think we can have some fun with this....I'll start with a synopsis for "Twister 2 - Nature's revenge"

"Bill and Jo are now happily married (again) with two kids (both 10 and 12 years). For years, they have been working (for a major university) on various ways of extending warning times. Bill and Jo stumble upon data that suggests a major outbreak similar to the Tri-State tornado; just when the university is about to cut thier program due to lack of funds (and a bigger football staduim).
Armed with thier data, they try to re-assemble the crew (and vehicles) to follow and intercept the storms. Many characters from the original cast have parted ways; Dusty is now running a Chase Tour company, Rabbit is now a meteorologist/reporter for the Weather Channel, Dr. Melissa Reeves has her own talk show...etc. Now the crew has to deal with today's technology and "amateur" storm chasers who overpopulate the roads and get themselves in danger. Much to the suprise of everyone, the storm seems to be headed to a major city...and it's up to our heroes to warn them."

Please feel free to add or take out the above premise. Perhaps Hollywood could use our input to help create the next movie...lol

How about.. Bill turns into what he hates the most.. a corporate sell-out, but a fresh crew of amateurs (from Canada) hit tornado alley for their annual storm chase vacation, and working on the same storm system, Bill and Jo are pressured by their corporate brass to deploy Dorothy so the company can prove it works and mass-market it (or whatever.. ) but Bill keeps getting closer to the amateurs and starts remembering what it used to be like, and switches sides, ending up teaming with the amateurs and puts his efforts into showing their device is better.

I dunno, it's 12:14am, I just got off work, and I'm too tired to put much effort into it